We never wanted to cover this
February 14th, 2008 at 06:57pm Linda Grist Cunningham
It’s 7:06 p.m. and I am sitting at my desk listening to the journalists in the News Tower cover the shooting at Northern Illinois University. Is it one dead, or four? Eighteen injured or 17? The challenge is nailing down facts and resisting the temptation to repeat what we just heard from a caller, an e-mailer or another news outlet. In the rush to push information to the Web, to parents, students and people around the world, it would be so easy just to “go with it.” We can’t. That’s simply not what we do. We gather the information, sort it and stake our credibility on what we post and what we print. There’s lots of information out there. Our job is to sort the facts from the speculations.
Over the next several days, this is what you can expect from the Rockford Register Star and rrstar.com: full, 24-7 coverage on the Web. We have reassigned our journalists to ensure they are in DeKalb fulltime, reporting and posting photos and videos around the clock. No matter what time you come to rrstar.com, you should expect to find updated information. In the daily newspaper, we will cover the news, provide more context and help readers understand what happened. In Sunday’s newspaper, we will recap the three days on campus with a multi-page special section.
Rrstar.com will break the news, provide the links and ensure deeper, broader coverage as fast we we can and with our commitment to credible, important, factual information. In print, we will add the context to help us all understand what cannot be understood.
This is our job.
Entry Filed under: NIU campus killings, Northern Illinois University, Web first
14 Comments Add your own
1. RRStar Visitor | February 14th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Lame. People coming to your website want news/coverage “now.” Where is the live feed from the news conference? What ever happened to “the power of 2?” Why is there more coverage on this from Chicago’s newspapers when this event happened “in our backyard?” Again, I say “Lame.”
2. Danielle | February 14th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Bravo on your coverage. Much better than the Trib. I come back over and over to check your timeline updates. The other sites are too overloaded. Very clean and informative. Thank you.
3. Diana S. | February 14th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Thank you for taking the time to check your facts! It is not necessary to have a constant wave of information that is incorrect.
4. just asking | February 14th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I am not exactly sure why this blog item is included as a link on your home page on the first day of this tragedy. Who cares.
5. Linda Grist Cunningham | February 14th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
To “just asking”: It’s OK not to care. There’s nothing that says everything we post has to be perfect for everyone. I guess I could ask the same thing of you: Why bother to read it if it’s not important to you? On a night like this, just being able to write, to reach out even to strangers, means something. Just as you did. Thanks for reading. Thanks for posting. Who cares? I do. Be safe.
6. Jo | February 14th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Thank you for the updates and coverage.
7. From Australia | February 14th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Sitting here in Australia and having lived in both Rockford and attended NIU, it is good to see that you are being careful to provide information as accurate as possible. Accurate news should not be sacrificed for fast news.
8. Christopher | February 14th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I don’t understand why it isn’t obvious that this saturation coverage is partially to blame for incidents like this.
9. Jan | February 15th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Hearing of this tragedy as a Rockford native and a very frequent visitor of the NIU campus is mind boggling. I do say that the media in general is giving the location wrong. I hope people come to your site to find out the facts. I just can’t comprehend something like this happening in our own back yard.
Living in Clearwater, Florida now, and seeing this on our local news as the number one headline… its tragic.
Keep covering the facts.
10. RRStar Visitor | February 15th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Again, “lame.” If other news sources are claiming things, then attribute the report to them if you cannot verify it personally, which even Channel 23/”Andy Gannon” is doing as I type this (he is quoting a Chicago Trib. report).
If strictly going into print (i.e. the “dead tree edition’), where one might have more time, I can see why going a bit on the “conservative” side of reporting is used–but this is a website, which is now seen as the equivalent of radio in the speed of reporting and breaking news, plus the Rrstar has promoted a connection with TV Channel 13 for news gathering/sharing, so live links to news conferences should be a no-brainer, and, again, this happened “in our backyard,” so I would assume that we would have coverage at least on par with the Chicago media (where the school is also an hour’s drive out of their core city markets).
The use of timelines is a plus (as the Rrstar has done for many breaking stories recently), but how about more frequent reports (ever heard of a product called “Twitter?” If not, look at a few Twitter feeds for examples of immediacy that one should see these days from a news website)?
11. Just asking | February 15th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Linda,
Perhaps “who cares” was a tad harsh. Guess I was just startled to see the headline “RR Star Editor: We Never Wanted to Cover This” on your home page in the first hours after the event. I wouldn’t think that would be among the most important questions in readers minds at that particular moment. But certainly I applaud any editor who tells her staff — take your time to get it right. Trust and credibility are your industry’s strongest value propositions.
12. Linda Grist Cunningham | February 15th, 2008 at 10:39 am
For those who might have bookmarked this particular post, though you might want to connect to the home page of this blog, Bricks&Clicks. There you’ll find additional postings from me and other staffers about what we are doing.
And, I do appreciate the feedback. Whether taking me to task or sharing your own thoughts, being able to talk with each other is important. Take care. See you back here later.
13. Linda Grist Cunningham | February 15th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Sorry, forgot to post the link: http://blogs.e-rockford.com/bricksandclicks/2008/
14. John Harder | February 15th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Coverage is not the issue here - what happened at NIU is the point. I commend RR Star for their coverage and the constant updates. Sorting through this mess and keeping a clear mind is not an easy thing to do. Most of us are connected in one way or another to NIU and keeping a clear mind as a journalist is not as clear cut as it seems. Emotions run high when a story as tragic as this, is filled with familiar names and faces. You are struck with both the intense loss of the victims and with the relief of knowing a friends son or dauthers is safe. This is one story I give the local media a thumbs up on coverage while trying to respect the news as it is happening and the confidentiality of the those ivolved.
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